A friendly warning to those who followed my blog for food and drink posts. The below is my unvarnished opinions about religion.  You may wish to leave now.

Well, we have yet more creationist nonsense from Pastor Dave, who has spent a few days discussing how one should properly do baptism and communion; the two things that are probably most important about Christianity (only baptized believers can do miracles like JC per Mark, and one must take communion or not be Christian in more than a few sects) but no one can agree on how it should be done.  He will not allow comments nor will answer questions about his claims.

But here one can consider what he has claimed. He, of course, is not the only Christian who makes such claims; I use him and his posts as a starting point and as an example. These claims are nothing new or special. I’ve thought of a couple more new things to address about Genesis, but other than that, if you’ve read my posts before, you might find some of the information repetitive. I hadn’t realized that Pastor Dave had been once employed in the aerospace industry; one would have thought he would have developed better logic skills there than he demonstrates. Unfortunately, a lot of Christians apply a certain level of logic and rationality to the rest of their life, and their religion isn’t held under the same glass.

Dave demonstrates his ignorance of evolutionary theory, and of what scientists actually say about what we can say about the universe (aka reality as we know it).   Let’s look at some things that Dave calls lies.

We started our discussion about Creation and the Fall by naming some of the lies we can believe about this Universe. It is probably worth reminding ourselves of them.

–          That this world is just here by accident or chance. In earlier times, people saw this world as being the by-product of the wars and love affairs of gods. In modern times, we are more likely to see the world as it is resulting from atheistic evolution.”

Well, since scientists don’t think that the world is here by chance or accident, that’s a false claim made by Dave, either out of intent or ignorance.  The laws of physics work well in explaining how this world ended up as it is, and indeed as a “creator” with no end and no beginning.  Believing that some god created it is no more believable than other religions’ claims of the world being a byproduct of wars or the love affairs of gods.  More than a few religions claim that their god and only their god was the creator; none of them have evidence to support this.

–          That the world around us and God are one and the same thing. This is sometimes called pantheism. This leads to people worshipping nature.

Well, what is wrong with worshipping nature, other than you get nothing back from nature for such worship?   It’s the same problem that most theists have with people being of other religions than their own or believing in no religion at all.  Those people are a threat to their need for external validation and their belief.   The existence of other religions and agnostics/atheists seems to terrify theists.  We dare to not give them what they want.

–          That God is distant from this world. He may have been the first cause, but he has just put the rules in place and left the Universe to get on with running itself. This is usually referred to as Deism.

Of course, Dave can’t show that his version of his religion is true, and that other version of religion aren’t.  Since this god cannot be shown to do anything in this world, there is no reason to assume that this god is close to this world (or far away).  It is required for Dave’s version of Christianity, but it is not shown to be true.

–          That “matter” (physical creation) is evil and that only the spiritual world is good. This is known as Dualism and is particularly associated with Gnosticism.

Hmmm, some versions of Christianity make this exact claim.  And Dave calls it a lie.  Now, how does he know?  There’s also the problem that nonbelievers don’t think that matter is evil or good.  It just is.  Dualism is also when a believer claims that the body and soul are separate things, often making unsupportable claims that somehow the brain isn’t involved in what a person is.  Continue reading “Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – and back around again to creationism and which version of Christianity is the “right” one” →